Remembrance
by Indoctrinated
Summary: If there's one thing I regret, it's that I didn't make her mine to lose. Implied TenRose.


A/N: This plot executed a sneak attack on me a few days ago, just when I was in the middle of writing the next chapter for my WIP. Since it was such an insistent little bugger, I was forced to drop my other story (temporarily), and write this one. I'll do my best to post again for my WIP but school is back to absorbing a lot of my time. In the mean time, have fun with this.

The TARDIS was quiet, only the white noise of time whistling past the walls of the ship filled the silent console room. Martha sat on the rail, feet swinging back a forth, a question that had been slowly driving her insane for the past several weeks dancing on the tip of her tongue, tantalizing her with escape as she furiously debated with herself whether or not to ask it. Finally just when she thought she could no longer stand to hold her silence, she scraped together the courage needed to say four simple words.

"Who was she, Doctor?" Martha asked, her voice quiet, eyes burning holes into the grating below her feet. She didn't dare to look up, afraid to face the fury she suspected was engraved into every line of the Doctor's face.

"Who was who?" he replied, his voice just as quiet and surprisingly calm. From the corner of her eye, Martha could see him standing back to her, diligently working away at a gadget of some sort with his sonic screwdriver, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. She could see the grease stains on his long, thin fingers from where she leaned against the rail, and the soft whirr of whatever he was working on buzzed in her ears. In retrospect, his tone did seem a little absentminded…he must've not been able to guess who she was asking about. That or he was hoping she would drop the subject. Martha couldn't be sure which.

She took a moment to gather her thoughts, then spoke, "The woman you see whenever you're talking about something so fast that I can't understand you, then you slowly trail off and fall silent and stare blankly out into space, sometimes for hours on end. The woman you see out of the corner of your eye and on every street corner when we go back to Earth so I can visit my Mum 'n Dad. The woman whose room is at the very end of the fourth corridor on the right. The woman whose gravestone you walk to and place a single red rose at when I'm off with my parents back in London."

A soft 'thunk' told Martha he had dropped whatever that gadget was back onto the console. She finally worked up the courage to look over at him, just as he sighed heavily and leaned on the console as if he was carrying the weight of the world on his back, and was taking a brief rest before shouldering his burden once more. He cleared his throat and turned to face her after a long moment. Martha was shocked to see a thin film of tears shining just on the rim of his eyelids.

That was Martha's curse: she always knew how to take a situation and just make it worse. What had she been thinking? That the Doctor's feelings couldn't be wounded, unlike hers? That he was immune to feeling pain and sorrow and loss? She turned to flee, choking out an apology and finding herself on the verge of tears as well.

"No," he said, in that same, quiet voice. "No, please don't leave."

She slowly turned back, seeing the Doctor standing tall once more, his burden shouldered and his eyes dry. Once more he had crammed his feelings into a faraway corner of his mind. His voice was now clear and firm, though it lacked the lilting quality she had become familiar enough with to miss when it was gone. "You want to know about the woman that I see in both my nightmares _and_ my dreams." She nodded, and he gave her a strange little smile in return, then waved a hand towards a chair the TARDIS had materialized into the console room. "Then you might want to grab a seat, because I can guarantee this will take awhile."

He spun to face the console, idly flipping a few switches and twisting some dials while Martha sunk into the newly added armchair. "Her name was…" He stopped and shook himself. "Is. Her name _is_ Rose."

"Rose," Martha repeated softly.

He turned and smiled at Martha. "Yes, Rose." The smile grew into a familiar grin. "Ah, just saying her name brings back so many memories…Like when she went back in time to save her father and nearly ripped the fabric of time while simultaneously almost destroying the human race. Then she got her face sucked off by an alien that invaded the tellies 1950's London. She wanted to see Elvis…poodle skirts, aviator sunglasses an' all that jazz. 'Course, between me and the TARDIS, we managed to mess up those coordinates pretty bad. Oh, and then there was the time with the werewolf."

Martha's eyes went wide. "Werewolf? I thought that was just a myth!"

He shrugged, and Martha heard that lilting tone slowly creeping back into his voice. "Well, you might call it a werewolf…in all fairness it's actually a lupine-wavelength haemovariform." He scowled, tossing Martha a sideways glance. "What is it with you humans and your tendencies to make all these wild background stories based on a shadow you saw in the night that might have sorta looked like a man-wolf thing if you were completely sloshed while wearing your Grandmum's super-magnified glasses that make everything go fuzzy? Eh?"

Martha grinned, but refused to give the Doctor the satisfaction of a full-bellied laugh. "So, this Rose…what happened to her?"

The Doctor sobered instantly, all traces of levity now gone from his face and his voice quiet once more. Martha knew, deep down, that the Doctor's smile had only been a façade he used to mask his true feelings, but she had again fooled herself into believing that his heart was behind that twitch of muscles in his face. He turned his back to her and picked up the gadget once more, the muted metallic sounds of his tinkering reaching her ears after a few moments. "I lost her during the Battle of Canary Wharf."

"Oh, you mean when those giant tin robots -"

"- Cybermen."

"- and those big dome things with bumps all over 'em -"

"- Daleks."

"- invaded and started killing each other?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry…how did she die?" She then quickly added, "If you don't mind telling me, of course."

He frowned, eyes squinting. "Die? Rose didn't die. I literally lost her during the battle."

Martha was profoundly confused. Why would the Doctor visit her gravestone if she wasn't dead? Why was there a gravestone there in the first place if she hadn't died? "What do you mean by lost? And why is there a grave if she isn't dead?"

He sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger. "So many people went missing that day…so many bodies were never found. Rose, and her mother, and her friend Mickey were placed on lists of the missing. When they never showed up to prove they were alive, or anyone at all showed up with proof of their location or status, they were officially labeled as dead. Three empty coffins were buried in their name. As for the being lost part, well I literally lost her to another dimension – an alternate Earth, if you will."

"Alternate Earth? I thought parallel dimensions were only in books and movies. I didn't know they were real. Speaking of that, why haven't we ever been to one? I thought the TARDIS could go anywhere."

He turned back to face her, although still tinkering with his mysterious piece of hardware. "Used to. The TARDIS _used to_ be able to go anywhere. That was centuries ago – my time, mind you – before the Time Lords were driven almost to the brink of extinction. I stand on the edge of that abyss, I'm the last one left. Before they died, the Time Lords kept an eye on the universe, always interfering when it was the most desperate moment, when all else was lost and they were backed into a corner." His lips split into a wry grin. "But then there were a few select Time Lords like me. Renegades and rebels, we were called. We stepped into timestreams and altered history where it should be altered, fixing wrong when we saw it and made it right." He shook himself again, and got back on topic. This regeneration seemed to have the amazing ability to wander off on tangents that had absolutely nothing to do with the original subject. "Anyways, when the Time Lords were still alive and well, they kept the lines open between alternate universes. It was very simple to skip between the dimensions, if you had permission from the council, that is."

His sly grin prompted Martha to say, although this time she consciously recognized the Doctor's attempts to lighten the conversation, "But I take it, you being a renegade and all, often failed to check with the council before skipping your way through the dimensions."

He grunted softly, his grin growing bigger. "'Often' doesn't even cover it. I never asked for permission, and they were pretty much content to ignore me. I'd saved their arses enough times to be useful…but not so many times that they would have welcome me back into their society with open arms."

Martha crossed her arms, eyebrows lowering. It was her classic 'now what does he mean by that?' pose. The Doctor wave a nonchalant hand, discouraging any questions based on his last statement. "I'll explain it later. That one'll take awhile too. Let's take this opening of my past one novel at a time." Martha nodded and relaxed in the chair again, and the Doctor returned to his tinkering. "So, the condensed version is, when the Time Lords were alive, it was possible to skip between universes because there were enough of us to be constantly mending and patching up the gateways. I'm only one Time Lord, ergo, impossible. When they died, the bridges died with them. No more skipping between universes, end of story."

"So Rose was trapped in an alternate dimension during the Battle of Canary Wharf…if the gateways were shut, then how is it possible she could be transported from one universe to the next?"

He chuckled. "And now we arrive at the part of the tale where the humans almost end up destroying two dimensions at the same time, but with only the best of intentions in mind. You see, there was this group called the Torchwood institute who figured out to skip between their universe and ours using these neat little harness things, brilliant really, if it weren't for the fact that they were constantly poking dozens of little holes in the fabric that separated the two universes every time they popped around in them." Martha looked lost, so the Doctor tried explaining it in a different way.

"Ok, so you have a sheet hung up on a drying line so it's pulled taut, right?"

Martha nodded, picturing the described object in her mind.

"Now that annoying little neighbor kid just got a new BB gun for his birthday and his running around shooting everything he can with it."

"God, I hate that kid. I have one just like him that lives in the apartment next to me," she groaned.

"Right then, so he sees your sheet. Let's think: one part impish child, one part BB gun, one part large sheet that's practically screaming to become a target…and you get?"

"A recipe for disaster," Martha replied.

"Exactly," the Doctor confirmed, "the kid shoots your nice, pristine sheet full of hundreds of little holes. You think: one hole? Ok, no problem, I can patch that right up in a second. But a hundred? Not so easy, and, on top of all that, the pieces of material between the holes are weakening and beginning to unravel, thread by thread."

"And once they completely unravel…?"

"Poof! No more separation between the two alternate universes. Instantaneously two universes cease to exist and instead become one new, chaotic, unruly universe. Like a cancer has crawled into the DNA of the universe and mutated it. They merge together, and what else could happen? Mass havoc, chaos in the streets. Sometimes doubles of everything, sometimes doubles of nothing. Things that shouldn't be there start appearing in the middle of the street, inside walls, right out of thin air. Some species evolve at a breakneck pace; others actually fall backwards, de-evolving into nothingness, like they never existed. Eventually the universe will implode and consume itself, the few pieces remaining of it fall into the Void, and are never seen again."

Martha looked squarely at him, and repeated what had happened in a nutshell. "So these Torchwood guys poked hundreds of little holes in the fabric separating the two universes, and with no Time Lords to patch up the rips, the universes were close to merging. I take it Rose became trapped in the other universe because she used one of those harness things…so why couldn't you use one as well to bring her back?"

He held up two fingers. "Two problems with that: one, I no longer had a harness of my own because I gave mine to Rose. And two, even if I had tried to get to her using the TARDIS, the size of the hole I would have created while attempting it – which is almost certainly suicide - would have surely been the straw that broke the camel's back."

"And so you lost her…"

"Yes, I did." He was silent for a moment, a pensive look on his face. "And if there's one thing I regret, it's that I didn't make her mine to lose." He turned his back to her again, hefted the gadget he had been working on, and inserted it into a slot on the console. The TARDIS beeped and the room filled with a low hum. A soft sound of victory escaped the Doctor's throat. He half-turned back to her, leaning against the console, hands shoved in his pockets.

There was only one question left for Martha to ask, and though she knew it would cause him pain, both of them understood that it had to be asked. "You loved her, didn't you?"

"Yes, very much. I love her still." He thumped himself lightly on the chest, over one of his hearts. "She'll always have a special place, right in there. Next to Sarah Jane, and Reniette…and you."

"Doctor…I-I don't thi-" She stuttered, taken aback by the Doctor's statement and quite unsure of how to tell him that she didn't feel the same.

He flushed a deep maroon. "I'm sorry, I know. That didn't quite come out right. I meant that you'll always stay with me, Martha. Just a piece of you that lives in my memories. But Rose…Rose was special." He laughed. "She was the one woman I tried the hardest not to get close to, and the only one I've ever been _in_ love with. You, Martha, you're different. I love you like a sister, like a best mate." He shrugged in apology.

"That, I am very glad to hear," she grinned, leaping up from the chair. She crossed the room to stand in front of the Doctor. "Wouldn't want you having to travel around with someone you didn't like. Now c'mere you big lump, and give me a hug."

The Doctor grinned and complied, pulling Martha into a tight embrace. After a few moments, Martha pulled back and held the Doctor by his shoulders, her eyes locked on to his. "You'll find her one day, Doctor."

"Martha, please don't-"

She shook her head, cutting him off. "No, Doctor. I _know_ you will. You know why? Because you love her. Because you are this universe's champion, and we all know that the champion always gets his lady in the end."

He sighed, and looked down. "You know as well as I do that happy endings are few and far between."

Martha just grinned. "You are too smart up here," she tapped him lightly on the temple, "-and have far too much good in here," she added, tapping his chest over one of his hearts, "to be denied. You love her Doctor, but you place far too much faith in the fact that you believe it to be impossible to ever see her again." She squeezed his arm and turned towards the console, hands splayed over the controls. "C'mon, Doctor, let's start looking."

He looked up, confused. "For what?"

"A way back to the woman you love," she replied. "Now, let's see that smile, Doctor."

He gave a half-hearted smirk. Martha shook her head in reply. "Nope, that's not it."

His lips finally spread in a familiar manic grin, and Martha laughed. "Yep, there it is. Knew you'd find it. We've got a lot of ground to cover, and all the time in the world to do it in. Literally. Show me the stars, Doctor, and I'll find you a way back to Rose."

For the first time in a very long time, the Doctor's smile wasn't forced.

Fin.


End file.
